SHAS­TRI BOODAN

Na­tion­al me­dia played an im­por­tant role in spurring and gen­er­at­ing in­ter­est in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

Cov­er­age of the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor has the po­ten­tial to spur in­vest­ments and agri-en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

These were among the state­ments made by Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Sen­a­tor De­vant Ma­haraj, who de­liv­ered the keynote at the fourth Ex­cel­lence in Agri­cul­tur­al Jour­nal­ism Awards, host­ed by the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co­op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture (IICA) and the Caribbean Agri­cul­tur­al Re­search and De­vel­op­ment In­sti­tute (Car­di) on Sat­ur­day night at the Cap­i­tal Plaza, Port-of-Spain.

He said the sec­tor ex­pand­ed by 5.1 per cent in 2013 from the pre­vi­ous year and the con­tri­bu­tion of agri­cul­ture to the GDP in­creased by 77 per cent from 2009 to 2013.

Ma­haraj said there has been a re­duc­tion in food im­ports from 2010 to 2013, while food in­fla­tion is down to 7.3 per cent since No­vem­ber 2013.

Ma­haraj said 2014 has been des­ig­nat­ed the in­ter­na­tion­al year of fam­i­ly farms. Small­hold­er fam­i­ly farms pro­duce four-fifths of the de­vel­op­ing world's food, ac­cord­ing to sta­tis­tics cit­ed by Ma­haraj.

"These women and men are key con­trib­u­tors to glob­al, re­gion­al and na­tion­al food se­cu­ri­ty. The aim of this Unit­ed Na­tions des­ig­nat­ed year of cel­e­bra­tions is to raise the pro­file of fam­i­ly farm­ing and small­hold­er farm­ing."

In the same ad­dress, Ma­haraj al­so ex­pressed some dis­ap­point­ment over the choice of sto­ries award­ed, how­ev­er. He said sev­er­al awards went to jour­nal­ists who high­light­ed neg­a­tive as­pects of the sec­tor. Ac­knowl­edg­ing that jour­nal­ists cov­er all ar­eas of agri­cul­tur­al ac­tiv­i­ty, he said there must be bal­ance in their cov­er­age.

Speak­ing with the Guardian af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny, Ma­haraj said he wants to know what cri­te­ria are used by IICA/CAR­DI to se­lect win­ning en­tries.

He said sev­er­al jour­nal­ists had told him that they had no knowl­edge that there was a com­pe­ti­tion on or how to en­ter.

"There are sev­er­al re­porters writ­ing pos­i­tive things about the sec­tor and they know noth­ing about these awards. I, how­ev­er, con­grat­u­late the cur­rent win­ners and I would like to see more peo­ple tak­ing part."

WIN­NERS

Guardian Me­dia Ltd re­ceived the award for over­all ex­cel­lence in agri­cul­tur­al jour­nal­ism.

Among the in­di­vid­ual win­ners were:

�2 Verne Tikas­ingh, CNC3, Best News Fea­ture (video)

�2 Khamal Georges, CNC3, Best News Fea­ture (re­porter)

�2 Shal­iza Has­sanali, T&T Guardian, Best Hu­man In­ter­est Sto­ry

�2 Shal­iza Has­sanali, T&T Guardian, Best Busi­ness Fea­ture

�2 Ster­ling Hen­der­son, I95.5FM ra­dio, Best News Fea­ture (ra­dio)

�2 Suresh Cholai, News­day, Best News Pho­to

�2 Jer­maine Cruik­shank, Ex­press, Best Fea­ture Pho­to

�2 Sue-Ann Way­ow, Ex­press, Best News Sto­ry

Kevonne Kerr- IICA/Car­di spe­cial award to youth/cit­i­zen jour­nal­ist

�2 Keron Bas­combe, Tech4agri.com, New Me­dia